29 March, 2024

You”re Not as Bad as You Think You Are

Features

by | 2 May, 2010 | 0 comments

By Mark Atteberry

IS GUILT WEIGHING YOU DOWN?

Christians everywhere beat themselves up over sins their heavenly Father has long since forgiven and forgotten. In Let It Go, seasoned author Mark Atteberry, with his customary mix of humor and heart, leads us to let go of inferiority, perfectionism, criticism, and shame””and hold on to abundance, grace, salvation, and joy. This article is an excerpt from this helpful, enjoyable new book.

Price: $12.99 “¢ Item 021530610 “¢ Available May 2010 athttp://www.standardpub.com/detail.aspx?ID=4504 or your local Christian bookstore.


You may not be as bad as you think you are! I know your natural tendency will be to dismiss these reasons out of hand and keep right on feeling bad about yourself, but I”m asking you not to do that.

For once in your life, ditch the assumptions and try to be objective. Trust me; it”s OK. It”s OK to cut yourself some slack. It”s OK not to beat yourself up. It”s OK to be fair when you look into the mirror.

All I ask is that you take these possibilities seriously, think them through, and see if they take you to a healthier place.

Possibility 1: Your Expectations Are Unrealistic
Several years ago I started reading a lot of church-growth and motivational books. Though it goes against my nature, I was trying to get into success thinking and goal setting and achievement because it seemed to me that those were the things that the most successful preachers with the growing churches were into. But the more I got into it, the more discouraged I became. I wasn”t seeing the dynamic results of the guys writing the books. I believed that I had some ability and I knew I was trying hard, but it just wasn”t happening for me the way I expected it to.

One day I sat down with a successful preacher whom I respect a great deal. He rocked my world when he told me he had only one goal: to be faithful to the Lord every day. He had no goals regarding church growth or building projects or any of the other things I was obsessing over.

He said that as far as he was concerned, every day that ended with him in a healthy relationship with God was a good day, period. And then he added, “If you”re faithful to the Lord every day, he”s going to bless you, and all that other stuff is going to take care of itself.” (Which, of course, sounds suspiciously like Matthew 6:33.)

That was the day I made a major adjustment to my goals and expectations. I lowered them in the sense that I reduced both the number and the scope. I simply decided to try to be the best Christian I could be every single day. And what a difference it made! Almost instantly I became a happier person, and in time I even became more successful in the areas I had previously been concerned about.

Now would be a good time for you to think about the expectations you”ve placed on yourself. If they”re unrealistic, you”ll repeatedly fall short and end up feeling a lot worse about yourself than you should.

Possibility 2: Your Focus Is Too Narrow
I have a friend who”s going through a painful divorce. He”s a dedicated Christian who has served the Lord faithfully for many years. The lives he”s touched in a positive way would be impossible to count. I dare say that all of his friends and relatives would judge him to be a good husband, certainly far better than most. Sadly, the only person whose opinion matters disagrees. His wife wants out.

As a result, my friend is beating himself up. He understands what a sacred institution marriage is. The very last thing he ever wanted was to become a divorce statistic. Now that he has, he says he feels like a piece of trash.

But his focus is too narrow. When he looks at himself in the mirror, all he sees is a man who couldn”t keep his wife happy. It”s as if those countless admirable accomplishments on his résumé don”t even exist.

I don”t mean to minimize the seriousness of divorce. (Anyone who knows me would testify that I would never do such a thing.) But at the same time, it should be acknowledged that a man is more than his marriage, just like he”s more than his career or his education or his parenting skills.

In Scripture, David is the perfect example. Let”s face it; he would never receive an ounce of respect from anyone if he were judged solely on his marital record.

But we don”t think of David as a miserable failure, because we understand there was more to him than his marital misadventures. David the ladies” man was also David the patriot, David the leader, David the warrior, David the military strategist, David the poet, and so on. To be fair to David (or anyone else), you need to look at the whole picture. We would do anyone a huge disservice if we focused only on his sins.

Is this what you”re doing to yourself?

Do you have an embarrassing failure on your résumé that you”ve never let go of? Maybe you”ve repented and sought God”s forgiveness, but you still insist on dragging the rotting corpse of that bad decision around with you so that you inhale the stink of it every single day.

I”m not suggesting you forget what you did; you need to remember so you won”t do it again. All I”m saying is that at some point you need to bury the corpse and move on with your life, realizing that while that failure may be a part of you, it certainly isn”t all of you.

Possibility 3: The Soil You”re Planted in Isn”t Very Fertile
There are many things I like about living in Florida and a few I don”t. One of the things I don”t like is that you can”t grow a decent tomato here. In southern Illinois, where I grew up, the tomatoes are juicy and flavorful. Here the tomatoes are dry and tasteless. The difference, of course, is the soil. Southern Illinois has soil that”s black and rich with nutrients. Here, it”s reddish brown and sandy.

This means that if a Florida gardener and an Illinois gardener had a tomato-growing contest, it would be . . . well, no contest. The Florida gardener could knock himself out babying his tomato plant and the Illinois farmer could do nothing but stick it in the ground and forget about it; it wouldn”t matter. The Illinois farmer would still win. You don”t have to have a green thumb to grow a great tomato in Illinois, because it”s all about the soil. Any old city slicker can do it.

In one sense, people are a lot like tomatoes: some are blessed to be planted in fertile soil and others are not. As a pastor, I know very well how this works. Some of us serve in small towns where there is zero population growth, while others serve in thriving areas where thousands of new residents move in every year. Some of us serve in economically disadvantaged areas where just getting a leaky roof fixed is a major challenge, while others serve in communities where every other car on the road is a Lexus or a BMW and the church coffers are always overflowing. And some of us wear all the hats and fight all the battles alone, while others have gifted staff members with specialized training supporting them. Obviously, it would be grossly unfair for pastors who are planted in sandy soil to feel bad about themselves because they”re not having the success of those pastors who are planted in more fertile soil . . . but a lot of them do.

And it”s not just pastors.

I know a perky little woman who”s married to a guy with the personality of a doorknob. He”s a very good person (which is why she married him), but he”s just not very exciting. Not surprisingly, his wife is frustrated out of her mind. She longs for an exciting, romantic relationship with her soul mate and beats herself up because she can”t make it happen. She”s tried everything from lingerie to playoff tickets, but so far nothing has caused a spike in Mr. Deadpan”s pulse. What she needs to realize is that this isn”t her fault. She just isn”t planted in the right kind of soil to have a storybook romance.

You see what I mean? It could be that what you are producing is truly exceptional when the disadvantages and hardships you”re dealing with are factored into the equation.

Possibility 4: The People You Depend on Are Letting You Down
As I”m writing these words, March Madness is in full swing. (For you nonsports fans, that”s the NCAA basketball tournament.) Talk about a tough job . . . what could be more trying than to be a college basketball or football coach? For one thing, the stakes are unusually high. Football and basketball produce millions of dollars for institutions, which is why said institutions feel so much pressure to win and are quick to fire coaches who don”t deliver the W”s.

But even more difficult to take than the pressure to win is the fact that, as a coach, your success””and therefore your future and your reputation””is in the hands of a bunch of teenage boys. You can do a great job of teaching your players about life and about the game, but you can”t babysit them. When they leave practice, they”re on their own. If they decide not to study or go to class, or worse, to get into trouble, they will suffer for sure . . . but so will you.

It”s a sad fact of life: sometimes the people you depend on for your success or your health or your happiness let you down. Your spouse might cheat, your children might defy you, your employees might steal from you, your employer might mismanage the business and cost you your job, or your investment company might go belly up and cost you your retirement. We live in a world where it”s possible to experience epic suffering without doing anything wrong.

Think about Caleb and Joshua as they returned from their spy mission to Canaan. They pleaded with the Israelites to trust God and march forward into the promised land in spite of the giants that inhabited it. But the Israelites refused to budge. And not only did they refuse, they even started talking about stoning Caleb and Joshua if that”s what it took to get them to shut up. At that point, our boys had no choice but to shut their mouths and suffer right along with their faithless countrymen.

As they tromped off into the wilderness, I imagine Joshua and Caleb second-guessed themselves, wondering what they might have said or done differently. Perhaps they beat themselves up for not being more persistent, for not finding a way to persuade the people. But the truth is, they did nothing wrong. It was the Israelites” failure, not their own.

You might be in a similar situation. Perhaps the failure you”re coping with and the suffering you”re going through is not your fault. Maybe the people (or the person) you were depending on failed miserably.

If so, give yourself a break. Just because you”re picking up the pieces doesn”t mean you”re the one who broke the vase.

Possibility 5: You”re Standing in the Shadow of Greatness
Shortly after my first book came out, my publisher invited me and several other authors to attend a reception for some of the most outstanding Christian retailers in the country. I can”t tell you how honored and excited I felt because I knew authors like Max Lucado, Ted Dekker, and John Maxwell would also be there representing the publisher. As one who admires writers the way some people admire movie stars, I expected this to be a thrilling experience.

But it wasn”t. In fact, I”ve rarely felt as out of place as I did that evening. Why? Because no one knew who I was. They all assumed I was one of the retailers! I kid you not. I stood there all by myself while crowds flocked around the other authors.

It”s easy to feel invisible standing in the shadow of greatness, especially if we struggle with inferiority. Fortunately, I only had to do it for one hour.

Maybe you have to do it every day at work. Maybe you”re married to greatness. Or maybe you”re one of those with the Roman numeral II after your name, causing everyone to look at you in the light of your famous father”s accomplishments. If you”re not careful, you can start feeling like a misfit, a disappointment, or worse, an imposter.

The good news is that God doesn”t compare you to others. He understands that your DNA is like no one else”s. The fact that you are surrounded by or married to greatness has no bearing on God”s expectations of you. That”s why Paul said, “Each of us will give a personal account to God” (Romans 14:12*). “A personal account” means you won”t slide in on someone else”s coattails, but it also means you won”t be diminished by somebody else”s greatness. I”ll take that deal any day.

Possibility 6: You Believe That Abilities Have a Pecking Order
Almost everywhere you go in this world, respect comes (or is withheld) according to what we do. In a hospital, for example, people practically bow and scrape to a doctor but hardly notice the woman pushing the janitorial cart. (In case you”re wondering, this explains why you can buy your preschooler a toy stethoscope but not a play toilet brush.)

Even in church it”s the preachers, singers, and authors who get all the glory, while nursery workers and lawn mowers and toilet scrubbers work in total anonymity and are lucky if someone ever thanks them for what they do.

The Bible clearly teaches that abilities do not have a pecking order, that they are all important to the health and success of the church. Paul even said, “Some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary” (1 Corinthians 12:22).

I know this all sounds very obvious, but you”d be surprised how many people don”t feel good about themselves because of the work they do. Do you?

Are you embarrassed to say what you do for a living? Only if you do something illegal, immoral, or unethical is that OK. Otherwise, your work is just as valid as anyone else”s.

Paul said, “Whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father” (Colossians 3:17).

Possibility 7: Your Values Are Inverted
A man who came to see me had a failing business on his hands and one doozy of a debt. Our conversation went something like this:

He: This is so humiliating.

Me: It”s a situation you have to deal with, sure. But it doesn”t define you, because you”ve done so many other things well.

He: This is going to tie my hands financially for years.

Me: Maybe so, but look what a great job you”ve done with your family. You have a wife who loves you and great kids.

He: You don”t seem to understand. I”ve got a huge problem here.

Me: This is what I understand and what you need to think about before you go jump off a cliff. Your business is failing, but your family is succeeding. As I see it, you got the most important thing right. You need to be thankful for that. I”m guessing there are a lot of successful businessmen with damaged, dysfunctional families who would trade places with you in a heartbeat.

You see the man”s mistake, don”t you?

He had allowed his values to become inverted. Things of secondary importance had overtaken things of primary importance in his mind. Consequently, he had lost the true measure of himself. He was actually a man of considerable accomplishment, but he viewed himself as a failure.

Jesus told a story about a man whose values were equally inverted. We call him the rich fool because he measured himself by the size of his barns and his ability to eat, drink, and be merry. Jesus” comment on the man”s upside-down view of life was succinct. He said, “Life is not measured by how much you own” (Luke 12:15).

To measure yourself properly, your values have to be right-side up. If they aren”t, you”ll feel good about yourself when you should feel bad and bad when you should feel good. If you”re not sure what your values should be, get into the Word. Start with the words of Jesus in the Gospels and go from there to the book of Proverbs.

Whatever you do, don”t rush. Go slow, think about what you”re reading, and pray yourself along. As your values get properly aligned, you just might feel a whole lot better about yourself.


Possibility 8: You”re Prejudging the Final Result
There is an old saying that has been repeated in churches for as long as I can remember. Whenever you find a mean little kid who is the terror of the Sunday school, somebody will invariably say, “He”ll probably grow up to be a preacher.” They mean it as a joke and people always laugh, but you”d be surprised how often it actually happens.

I can honestly say that the two meanest little boys I”ve ever known both grew up to be missionaries. One of them happened to be in my wife”s Sunday school class when he was about 6 years old. Never a Sunday went by that Marilyn didn”t come home with some wild story to tell about that little monster. She was convinced he had deep psychological problems. Out of all the kids in the church, we had him pegged as the most likely to end up in jail.

Imagine our surprise years later when I picked up a Christian periodical and ran across an article about a missionary with the same name. I looked at my wife and said, “No way. It can”t be!” But we did some checking and it was. The little psychopath had actually grown up to become a man of God.

This is why we should never prejudge anything or anyone, including ourselves, yet that”s exactly what millions of us do. Especially those of us who are parents.

Perhaps right now you have a teenager who makes you feel like the worst parent in the history of the world. You look at his jeans (big enough for three people), you stare at his hairstyle (looks like a nuke went off on top of his head), you meet his friends (did they just arrive from another planet?), and you hear his music (which would make a car crash sound like “Brahms Lullaby”), and suddenly you begin to understand why some animals eat their young. You ask yourself where you went wrong and wonder if you could be imprisoned for releasing such a person into society.

Whatever you do, don”t prejudge what your child will become, and don”t condemn yourself as a failed parent before the end of the story has been written. Lots of weird teenagers have grown up to become excellent adults. In fact, if you were to think back to your high school years, you”d probably be forced to admit that you caused your own parents a few sleepless nights. Child-rearing expert Dr. Kevin Leman wrote a book, the title of which is a much-needed reminder: Adolescence Isn”t Terminal: It Just Feels Like It.

________

*All Scripture references are from the New Living Translation of the Bible.


Mark Atteberry is the preaching minister at Poinciana Christian Church in Kissimmee, Florida.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest Features

Follow Us